The invention relates to a distributing/collecting case (or tank or header) of aluminum or an aluminum alloy of an at least double-flow brazed evaporator of a motor vehicle air conditioning equipment with the features of the preamble of claim 1. Such a case is known from the DE-C1-195 15 526 (in particular FIG. 4).
The term distributing/collecting case is to include the three application possibilities of a case (or tank or header), namely either, in case of an even number of the flows, to be provided only at one respective end of the heat exchange tubes of the evaporator with an inlet and an outlet function, or, in case of an uneven number of flows, to concern the case on the inlet and/or on the outlet side, and finally in both mentioned cases to be able to accomplish an additional distribution function to individual heat exchange tubes or groups thereof as a case on the inlet side.
Moreover, the invention concerns especially the design of such a case in a multipart embodiment with a bottom and a cap, which, however, in contrast to the otherwise usual construction, are terminated by at least one separate end piece at least on one front side. In this case, the refrigerant inlet is provided at at least one case wall, in the mentioned known case at the cap of the case.
The design of at least one separate end piece offers a greater liberty concerning the design and in particular the manufacture of tube bottom and cap from a solder-coated or braze-coated sheet metal of aluminum or an aluminum alloy, if the tube bottom and the cap have a constant external cross-section between the case walls on the front side in the longitudinal extension direction and thus also have a constant external cross-section of the case in the longitudinal extension direction, one can carry out the prefabrication of tube bottom and cap invariantly with respect to the case length by cutting off sections from the prefabricated longitudinal profiles of cap and tube bottom, as required. This is already interesting if during prefabrication a case wall for the front side is additionally prefabricated, as then the cutting off can be effected at the other end. Of particular interest and particularly material-saving is a prefabrication as an endless billet made by an arbitrary fabrication technology, the parts of which are supplemented by end pieces at both front sides, no matter how long the parts are. This is not only true for a continuous extrusion but in particular for other continuous designs of an undefined length, as they e.g result from rolling sheet metal parts, which is preferred in connection with the invention. This particularly enables the processing of sheet metals pre-coated with solder or braze.